Stringer, aroused now to excitement, went blundering
forward through the fog, joining the men in the bows.
Four pairs of eyes were peering through the mist,
the damnable, yellow mist that veiled all things.

“Curse the fog!” said Stringer; “it’s
just our damn luck!”

“Cutter ’hoy!” bawled a man at his
side suddenly, one of the river police more used to
the mists of the Thames. “Cutter on the
port bow, sir!”

“Keep her in sight,” shouted Rogers from
the stern; “don’t lose her for your lives!”

Stringer, at imminent peril of precipitating himself
into the water, was craning out over the bows and
staring until his eyes smarted.

“Don’t you see her?” said one of
the men on the lookout. “She carries no
lights, of course, but you can just make out the streak
of her wake.”

Harder, harder stared Stringer, and now a faint, lighter
smudge in the blackness, ahead and below, proclaimed
itself the wake of some rapidly traveling craft.

“I can hear her motor!” said another voice.

Stringer began, now, also to listen.

Muffled sirens were hooting dismally all about Limehouse
Reach, and he knew that this random dash through the
night was fraught with extreme danger, since this
was a narrow and congested part of the great highway.
But, listen as he might, he could not detect the sounds
referred to.

The brazen roar of a big steamer’s siren rose
up before them. Rogers turned the head of the
cutter sharply to starboard but did not slacken speed.
The continuous roar grew deeper, grew louder.

“Sharp lookout there!” cried the inspector
from the stern.

Suddenly over their bows uprose a black mass.

“My God!” cried Stringer, and fell back
with upraised arms as if hoping to fend off that giant
menace.

He lurched, as the cutter was again diverted sharply
from its course, and must have fallen under the very
bows of the oncoming liner, had not one of the lookouts
caught him by the collar and jerked him sharply back
into the boat.

A blaze of light burst out over them, and there were
conflicting voices raised one in opposition to another.
Above them all, even above the beating of the twin
screws and the churning of the inky water, arose that
of an officer from the bridge of the steamer.